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Increasing Time Management Skills for Achieving Goals

We are all familiar with the saying, “Time is money.” Sometimes, that is relevant, for instance, if you are paying someone by the hour. But money doesn’t always enter into the equation. I like how essayist Michael Ventura put it: “Time is life.” For what we do with our time determines the meaning of our lives.

Any goals we have in life are connected with time. Whether it is making a million dollars before age 30 or losing 10 pounds in the next 30 days. In one way or another, time gives shape to goals.

Holistic goal setting begins and ends with time management. For without time management, you cannot have balance. And you must be able to balance your time in the best way possible in order to achieve your goals. Most of us fail to achieve goals because we “lack the time.” That is why this section needed to be included in this guide.

The concept of time management has been in existence for more than 100 year believe it or not. Unfortunately the term time management creates a false impression of what a person is able to do.

Time can’t be managed in the sense that we can’t stop it from passing. We can only manage ourselves and our use of time. That is all that can be done. Time management is actually self- management.

For effective time management, we need the ability to plan, delegate, organize, direct and control every aspect of our lives. Sometimes just to find 30 minutes a day for some activity to improve life can seem impossible. Finding a few days to get away, for spome, is impossible.

Just the other day my daughter, Kamilia, calling from the University of Maryland, said she was trying to find a weekend to come down to South Carolina to see me. So far she hasn’t found it. It’s hard.

There are common time wasters which need to be identified

Timothy Ferris stressed the 80/20 rule in his bestseller, The 4-Hour Work Week. He said that 80% of your productivity comes from 20% of what you do. Replicate the effective 20% and throw away the wasteful 80% and you will perform revolutions in your time management.

In order for a time management process to work it is important to know what aspects of our personal management need to be improved. Otherwise what is the point in trying?

Below you will find some of the most frequent reasons for reducing effectiveness in and around our lives. You might want to check the ones which are causing to be the major obstacles to your own time management. These are referred to as your time stealers.

Identifying your time stealers

• Interruptions — for example the telephone. Yes, some calls are important. But most can wait. Get caller ID if you don’t already have it. If it’s important, the caller can leave a message.
• Checking e-mail repeatedly. Once or twice a day is perfectly acceptable.
• Reading the news obsessively. The world will go on fine without you being so highly informed.
• Tasks you should have had someone else do for you. If you are earning $400 a day, don’t waste your time doing something you could pay someone else $10 per hour to do.
• Procrastination and indecision. As Einstein brilliantly observed, “Nothing happens until something moves.”
• Acting without total information. Have you ever driven around lost because you didn’t have clear directions or a map? I used to follow the advice, “When all else fails, follow directions.” Now I like to have the directions before I start.
• Dealing with other people’s issues or problems. Service is one thing. Gossip is another.
• Unclear communication. Unclear objectives and priorities. This is probably the biggest and most important time waster. It affects all we do both professionally and personally. Those who accomplish the most in a day know exactly what they want to accomplish beforehand.
• Lack of planning, which leads to the next item –
• Stress, anxiety and fatigue
• Inability to say “No” to anybody with a request. The general rule is; if people can dump their work or problems on to your shoulders they will do it.
• Personal disorganization
• Addictions, such as television, sports, politics, overeating, and a need for excitement

There are others you can find, I’m sure. The longer the list, the more you have to work with. Can you find an extra 20 minutes? An hour? Perhaps you found enough newly discovered time to learn a new language, or enough time to contemplate the meaning of life.

Think about this: In competitive swimming and running, coaches try to find ways that their athletes can trim perhaps a half of a second in their times. That can be the difference in a winning a world record or in losing a competition.

By bringing consciousness and awareness into your daily life, you can find an abundance of time waiting to be shaped into your ideal of life.

Always define your goals as clearly as possible

Do you find you are not doing what you want to do just because your goals have not been set properly yet?

One of the factors which make successful and happy people stand out is their ability to work out what they want to achieve and have written goals which they can review them constantly.

Your long term goals should impact on your daily activities and be included on your “to do” list. Without a goal or objective people tend to just drift off personally and professionally

Analyze your use of time — bringing consciousness into the process

Are you spending enough time on the projects which although may not be urgent now but are things that you need to do to develop yourself or your career?

If you are constantly asking yourself “What can I do to make things easier for me right now?” it will help you to focus on ‘important tasks’ and stop reacting to tasks which seem urgent (or pleasant to do) but carry no importance towards your goals.

Try getting and using a personal calendar, setting reminders on your computer, cell phone or palm pilot.

Have a plan

How can you achieve your goals without a plan? I don’t even think that is possible.

Most people know what they want but have no plan to achieve it except by sheer hard work. What’s the point in doing hard work when you don’t know how to apply it?

Your yearly plan should be reviewed daily and reset as your achievements are met. Successful people make lists constantly. It enables them to stay on top of priorities and enable them to remain flexible to changing priorities. This should be done for both personal and business goals.

Action plan analysis

Problems will always happen when you set a plan. The value of a good plan is to identify them early and seek out solutions immediately.

Good time management enables you to measure the progress towards your goals because “What you can measure, you can control”. Always try to be proactive in the achievement of successfully managing your time.

Time management is not a hard subject to understand, but unless you are committed to building better time management techniques into your daily routine you’ll only achieve partial (or no) results and end up right back where you started.

You have to commit to managing your time better and remember to include time for yourself.

The lesson that you need to learn is that the more time we spend planning our time and activities the more time we will have for those activities.

By setting goals and eliminating time wasters and doing this everyday you may find you will have extra time in the week to spend on those people and activities most important to you.
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